NaNoWriMo, Denver Comic Con, and being sick

I lost a lot of last week because I was sick, and then over the long weekend I went to Denver Comic Con, so I've been MIA a lot lately.

My illness hit me two weekends ago, and it really hit me hard.  I canceled a lot of my obligations that weekend and slept for most of it, thinking that would help me to be fully functional once Monday rolled around.  Unfortunately, once I went back to my regular schedule on Monday, I had a major setback, and it wasn't until Thursday or so that I felt well again.  Luckily it cleared up before Comic Con!

Unfortunately, it did mean that I was very behind on my work last week, and since I get new assignments on a weekly basis from my regular clients, I had to get caught up.  And because of Comic Con over the weekend, I didn't have a lot of opportunities there.  It took me until about Wednesday to do it, but I think I'm finally caught up.

I did get a little work done over the weekend, but not much.  I'd found out a little last minute (at least by con planning standards -- I found out a few weeks ago) that NaNoWriMo got a booth at the con, and so I had committed to helping with it over the weekend. I'm also thinking of applying to be a Municipal Liaison (or ML) for the Denver area this year during NaNoWriMo, so it was good experience for me -- talking to people about NaNo in an official capacity.

Explaining the crazy thing that is NaNo in just a few sentences isn't easy, and I tried it a few different ways before I got comfortable with the explanation.  I did find that with a more awkward audience, it tended to make me feel more awkward, and I'd start tripping over my words, whereas a less awkward audience made me feel more comfortable with my explanation.  I think we recruited a lot of future wrimos over the course of the weekend.  Of course, there were also plenty of people who came by who already knew what NaNoWriMo was -- there is a lot of overlapping between the people who like Comic Con and the people who like NaNoWriMo -- but who didn't know about the strong local/social aspect, or just wanted more information about some aspect of it.

Overall the weekend was great, although I didn't end up getting away from the booth very often.  I didn't want to walk around all by myself, so I only really did when there was enough of us there for someone to watch the booth while I walked around with one of my friends.  I went to two author panels, which felt just like a slightly bigger AnomalyCon, seeing as how the panels included some of the same authors that always attend AnomalyCon.  I also browsed the dealer room, which felt nothing like AnomalyCon, since it was so much bigger and aimed at a different audience.

We're planning on trying to get the booth again next year, so hopefully I'll do more planning, go in costume, and have more of an idea of what I want to see.  With any luck, I'll also be an ML by that time, so I'll be a little more comfortable talking about NaNo in an official capacity.